Are cell phones and wifi signals toxic? This question was posed by celebrity A-lister Gwyneth Paltrow on her website Goop.

It’s almost impossible to remember a time without smartphones, which makes it equally easy to forget that the technology is still relatively new, with safety requirements that, for the most part, are generally untested. The scientific community’s rumblings about brain cancer and the new-to-us affliction “electro-sensitivity” are worth exploring, at the very least, so we tapped three experts in the field—Dr. David Carpenter, Ann Louise Gittleman, and Devra Davis—to help us understand the complicated and messy world of cell phone and WiFi safety.

Gwyneth Paltrow: Are cell phones and wifi signals toxic

As predicted by Professor Victor Newman here – fashion and celebrities will play their part as the world adjusts to the new reality of lost electro-innocence. We saw another celebrity last year, Noel Edmonds making the headlines with his views on Electrosmog.

The answer to Gwyneth Paltrow’s question is almost certainly yes as more and more research is showing this to be the case.

At Beneficial Environments we have solutions to reduce this exposure to electromagnetic pollution we can also perform an electromagnetic survey of your home, office or clinic.

By the early 1970s, the great forests of West Germany were dying. The Germans suspected the cause was industrial pollution that resulted from the tremendous post-Word War II economic growth. Eventually research studies would reveal the link between industrial pollution, acid rain, and deforestation. But in the face of potentially irreversible damage to an irreplaceable national treasure, the Germans decided to act before they had definitive proof by passing the groundbreaking Clean Air Act of 1974 to limit industrial emissions. In doing so, the Germans adopted a new approach to countering environmental risks. The subsequent decades have seen Vorsorgeprinzip (literally, the “precautionary principle”) become an underlying principle of German environmental legislation.

The Precautionary Principle instructs us that in the face of serious threats, a lack of scientific certainty never justifies inaction.

The BioInitiative Report (BIR) has its origins among members of the BioElectroMagnetics Society (BEMS), on which Martin Blank served as president in 2007. A year earlier a mini-symposium took place in 2006 with members of BEMS and from the scheduled talks and discussions, the key learnings were:

Safety standards built around protecting humans from thermal effects of EMF radiation completely fail to consider the many fundamental biological processes, well documented to be affected by EMF at nonthermal levels.

The energy thresholds for biological damage are very low, and so the thresholds for potentially negative health effects are probably also very low.

Simultaneous exposure to different frequency ranges could have additive effects on the exposed humans; similarly, effects of cumulative exposures must also be considered.

The spark set off at the symposium led the participants to form the BioInitiative Working Group that eventually organized the BioInitiative Report (BIR). The BIR (you can download it from here) reviewed a wide collection of scientific evidence obtained in connection with studies on RF/MW exposure (which are rapidly increasing). but also included studies of power-line ELF.

The Precautionary Principle and the BioInitiative Report is a proactive policy to protect citizens from potentially adverse environmental influences when information about the risks they present is incomplete.

The BIR was updated in 2012, and the Precautionary Principle still applies, although it is important to remember that the application of the Precautionary Principle is designed as an interim step – a stopgap measure. The risks of continued inaction are simply too great.

While many of continue to push for improved regulatory scrutiny of EMF emissions, you should not wait for such action.

There are steps you can and should take as an individual to minimize your exposure to potentially harmful EMF radiation, without going back to the stone age.

Adapted from “Overpowered” by Martin Blank PhD, chapter 11, The Precautionary Principle and the BioInitiative Report.

At Beneficial Environments we sell products that minimize such exposure.